msim brings word that Australian legislators are considering an anti-piracy measure that would require ISPs to terminate internet access for people who repeatedly download copyrighted material. The legislation would set up a three-strikes system similar to the one proposed in the UK recently. While British ISPs resisted suggestions that they act as internet police, the response may not be the same in Australia, where the government has already tried to censor the internet. "Under the three-strikes policy, a warning would be first issued to offenders who illegally share files using peer-to-peer technology to access music, TV shows and movies free of charge. The second strike would lead to the offender's internet access being suspended; the third would cancel the offender's internet access."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vlad Dolezal tips us to a philosophical take on why Linux hasn't grown to challenge Windows as the most popular operating system. According to the author, the reason is simple; Linux is free, and humans tend not to equate free things with being valuable. "Here's what Compy McNewb sees. He can get both OS's for free. But one of them is worth over three hundred dollars, while the other one is worth nothing. 'That's not true!' I hear you scream. 'Linux is worth a lot! It's just being offered for free!' I know it's not true that Linux is worth less than Windows. It's far more valuable to the end user in terms of getting things done. But that's not what Average Joe Computer Newbie sees. He sees a free product versus a three-hundred-dollar product he can get free. It's all about the perception!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ScienceDaily is running a story about the recently discovered interaction between Saturn's A-ring and one of Saturn's small moons, Enceladus. Thanks to data from Cassini, scientists have discovered that ejected matter from Enceladus' ice geysers is absorbed into the A-ring, where it is then trapped. We discussed the geysers themselves a few years ago, and researchers have been working since then to determine where the material was going. Quoting: "This is the latest surprising phenomenon associated with the ice geysers of Enceladus to be discovered or confirmed by Cassini scientists. Earlier, the geysers were found to be responsible for the content of the E-ring. Next, the whole magnetic environment of Saturn was found to be weighed down by the material spewing from Enceladus, which becomes plasma -- a gas of electrically charged particles. Now, Cassini scientists confirm that the plasma, which creates a donut-shaped cloud around Saturn, is being snatched by Saturn's A-ring, which acts like a giant sponge where the plasma is absorbed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

GSGKT writes "Google's Anti-Malware Team has made available some of their research data on malware distribution mechanisms while the research paper[PDF] is under peer review. Among their conclusions are that the majority of malware distribution sites are hosted in China, and that 1.3% of Google searches return at least one link to a malicious site. The lead author, Niels Provos, wrote, 'It has been over a year and a half since we started to identify web pages that infect vulnerable hosts via drive-by downloads, i.e. web pages that attempt to exploit their visitors by installing and running malware automatically. During that time we have investigated billions of URLs and found more than three million unique URLs on over 180,000 web sites automatically installing malware. During the course of our research, we have investigated not only the prevalence of drive-by downloads but also how users are being exposed to malware and how it is being distributed.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

castrox writes to tell us that The Pirate Bay's legal concerns are continuing to grow. Prince and the Village People are planning to sue the popular torrent site with the help of the Web Sheriff law firm. John Giacobbi of Web Sheriff has also asked Swedish band ABBA to join the cause. The suit is seeking "millions of dollars" in damages, although it's still uncertain to whom the charges will be directed. The likely targets are the four Pirate Bay founders who were indicted a few weeks ago on charges of breaking copyright law. Prince has taken investigative action against The Pirate Bay in the past.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last summer, when I was exploring the edges of Twitter, and building a voicemail service that hooked into Twitter with BlogTalkRadio, and then hooking my digital camera up to Twitter through Flickr, it seemed inevitable that Twitter would eventually support "payloads" so that objects like pictures and MP3s could hitch a ride on a Twitter message without using up any of he 140 characters, and with a neat url-less display.

The idea just kind of sat there, we've been quietly using the services, accepting their awkwardness, but without direct support from Twitter, they probably won't become mainstream.

Along comes Twitxr, in a post by Mike Arrington on TechCrunch, and I go -- why? This doesn't seem right. Too many steps. I have it much easier, Twitter is hooked right up to my camera, I never have to get my desktop or laptop in the loop when I want to post a picture. To prove the point, I'll now take a picture of this post, and shoot it up to Twitter.

So now Twitxr basically says it's time to give up the wait for Twitter, and maybe they're right, but for this??? I don't really think this is what I want. If I have to use a whole new Twitter for photography, I probably want it to be Flickr, which I already use, whose API we've already mastered, whose scaling we trust, and even though Yahoo's future is in doubt, it's more certain than that of a startup.

Choice #1, if the Twitter guys are listening, is to go ahead and help us, your developers, create something seamless out of what you already have. No matter what it's easier for users to stay with what they're already using. It really isn't, it seems to me, in your interest to have users switch??

Twitxr throws down a challenge to both Flickr and Twitter.

To Twitter: Scale, scale, scale and add payloads to the API.

To Flickr: Go ahead and do an event streamer for pictures.

Alan Jones: "Twixtr seems to do a pretty fair job of guesstimating my location with each image I upload from my iPhone."

Euler points out a story about art created through mathematics. The Science News article covers selections from a recent exhibit, where over 40 artists gathered to show their work and the math behind it. The rest of the pieces are also viewable at the exhibit's website. "Michael Field, a mathematics professor at the University of Houston, finds artistic inspiration in his work on dynamical systems. A mathematical dynamical system is just any rule that determines how a point moves around a plane. Field uses an equation that takes any point on a piece of paper and moves it to a different spot. Field repeats this process over and over again--around 5 billion times--and keeps track of how often each pixel-sized spot in the plane gets landed on. The more often a pixel gets hit, the deeper the shade Field colors it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tendraes brings us a story about legal experts who are warning that Microsoft's "covenant not to sue" over use of the OOXML specification is both ambiguous and untested. Developers wishing to make use of OOXML are unlikely to understand the complex legal language of the Open Specification Promise, and such a document - being neither a release nor a contract - has never been tested in court. From ZDNet Asia: "David Vaile, executive director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Center at the University of New South Wales, said that Microsoft participants at a recent symposium on the issue found it challenging to explain how an ordinary person 'or even an ordinary lawyer' could easily determine which parts of the specification were covered. 'This lack of certainty would mean a cautious lawyer may be reluctant to advise any third party to rely on the promise without extensive and potentially quite expensive analysis, and even that could be inconclusive,' Vaile said. 'In turn, this could restrict its viability as a usable standard for less well-resourced users, including small developers and many public organizations.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ed. Note: the following essay is by periodic BB contributor Jasmina Tešanovi?; as I format this post and prepare to hit "publish," Jasmina sends a second email: "Update: groups of hooligans have thrown stones on American and Slovenian (presiding country of EU) embassies, on police members and journalists...several people are hurt ...they are cruising town now here in Belgrade but police are controlling them...reporters are following up..."

Image: "Orthodox Church," cc-licensed photo from Flickr by decafinata.

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The Sirens :: 02.17.2008

It's starting again: the language of war is the daily bread in Serbia. The sirens of nationalism are turned on again, as if nothing had changed in the eight years after Milosevic was toppled.

Or as if nothing had changed since the year 1389 and the mythic battle of Kosovo: a myth is a myth, a dictator who uses the language of myths is squandering people s minds as well as their lives.

Today, 17 February. at 15 hours Kosovo province unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia. It been ten years now since I wrote my "Diary of a Political Idiot," a book that started with riots in Kosovo. Although I've tried to stop writing that book, I have never been allowed to. The Balkan disorder became the model of world disorder.

I can hear the voice of my dead mother, who passed away in 1999 after the NATO bombings, with her last words: "take care of Kosovo." She didn't mention her granddaughter, my daughter, whom she loved more than herself or me. She instead scolded me, the traitor, severely: Kosovo is not yours and you cannot give it away. You and your similar traitors don't have pants on their asses and you are giving Kosovo, our heritage, away.

Last week in Geneva, I talked to a young Albanian blogger. He told me: this time "independence" will be declared for real, because it is not our independent decision but that of the world community. Nobody asks us anything anymore. They just give us orders and set rules.

Most young Serbian people have never visited Kosovo. There is nor reason to go to Kosovo if you are not trapped in Kosovo already. It is a hard place. Since the fall of national Yugoslav radio and television, Serbian has fallen out of use there. The Serbs never bothered to learn Albanian.

In Belgrade yesterday a thousand nationalists with Serbian flags marched downtown to the Slovenian embassy. Today, in front of the American embassy, potential riots were controlled by the police. In Kosovo province, two thousand policemen from EU mission will be deployed for 120 days until the situation "becomes stable."

Will it ever become stable? Serbian officials threaten to downgrade their diplomatic relationships with anyone who recognizes independent Kosovo, meaning most of the world. The newly elected president of Serbia, Boris Tadic, declared that only "diplomatic tools" will be employed to refuse the independence, but the same might be said of the fraught relationship of Cuba and the USA, which goes on for whole lifetimes.

The president of the government with much harsher tones accused the US and EU of robbing Serbia of its territory, after destroying Serbia in 1999 with bombs. High ranked Orthodox priests also condemn the loss of their historical heritage. The members of the Serbian government tour Kosovo, encouraging Serbs to stay there. They could have done that eight years ago by coming to terms with the criminal ethnic cleansing.

The last sentence in my 1999 diary was: I hope they don't build a wall. Today I must say the same: I hope the Serbian population in Kosovo survives, and I hope they don t build a wall: them, us, their armies, our armies, foreign armies.

After their independence declaration, they are feasting in Pristina, while here in Belgrade it is cold, freezing silent and peaceful. Only small groups of hooligans are gathering under a strong survelliance of the Serbian police.

May it be a beginning of new era; may our children never have another war with their neighbors just because they speak a different language and have a different sign on their graves. The Balkans have always been a multiethnic territory. No matter who wins the battle, nobody will be able to win a war.

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Jasmina Tešanovi? is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.

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Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanovi? on BoingBoing:

- Christmas in Serbia
- Neonazism in Serbia
- Korea - South, not North.
- "I heard they are making a movie on her life."
- Serbia and the Flames
- Return to Srebenica
- Sagmeister in Belgrade
- Jasmina Tešanovi?: What About the Russians?
- Milan Martic sentenced in Hague
- Mothers of Mass Graves
- Hope for Serbia
- Stelarc in Ritopek
- Sarajevo Mon Amour
- MBOs
- Killing Journalists
- Jasmina Tešanovi?: Where Did Our History Go?
- Serbia Not Guilty of Genocide
- Carnival of Ruritania
- "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"
- Faking Bombings
- Dispatch from Amsterdam
- Where are your Americans now?
- Anna Politkovskaya Silenced
- Slaughter in the Monastery
- Mermaid's Trail
- A Burial in Srebenica
- Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal
- To Hague, to Hague
- Preachers and Fascists, Out of My Panties
- Floods and Bombs
- Scorpions Trial, April 13
- The Muslim Women 
- Belgrade: New Normality
- Serbia: An Underworld Journey
- Scorpions Trial, Day Three: March 15, 2006
- Scorpions Trial, Day Two: March 14, 2006
- Scorpions Trial, Day One: March 13, 2006
- The Long Goodbye
- Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade
- Slobodan Milosevic Died
- Milosevic Funeral

tringtring alerts us to news that the National Science Foundation has requested $20 million in funding to work on "Science and Engineering Beyond Moore's Law." The PC World article goes on to say that the effort "would fund academic research on technologies, including carbon nanotubes, quantum computing and massively multicore computers, that could improve and replace current transistor technology." tringtring notes that quantum computing has received funding on its own lately, and work on multicore chips has intensified the hunt for parallel programming. Also, improvements are still being made to current transistor mechanics.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last night a bunch of us on Twitter watched the C-SPAN broadcast of the Democratic Party dinner in Milwaukee where both Clinton and Obama spoke.

Clinton was unusually good, but as Frank Rich says in today's excellent NY Times column, "It's hara-kiri for a politician to step into the shadow of even a mediocre speech by Barack Obama."

Obama was far from mediocre last night. His speech was of such high caliber, so motivational, even in anger Obama is the man, he keeps getting better and now he's in league with the best American political oratory. The man is only 46 years old.

Last night's speech is archived on the C-SPAN site. We're having trouble with it on Macs but it's reported to work well on Windows.

So many of us want to get on board the Obama Express. This is the America we want. This is the leadership we've been lacking. You have to go back to Kennedy's "Ask Not" plea to find a leader as inspiring as Obama.

And inspiration matters -- totally.

How else are we going to get past the wedge issue politics of the last N years. We need some good strong glue to connect us again.

The last eight years have been so terrible. The US government did more to help Iraqis than it did to help Americans. 49 percent of the electorate was held in contempt and then after the election the other 51 percent was held in contempt as well. No one but the cronies of the Bush family were given access to power. Iraqi politicians had more influence on our government than Democrats.

Yesterday I heard that 5 percent of the homes in Detroit are in some form of foreclosure. It's almost as bad in parts of the sunbelt, California, Arizona, Florida. And the mortgage crisis isn't over. There are more cliffs in the coming months, more junk mortgages whose payments balloon in the summer and fall, so there will be more foreclosures, more families going bankrupt. Those who think the government will bail them out should think about how effective government help has been in Louisiana and Mississippi, American states that are still economically under water, almost three years after Katrina.

Fred Wilson is concerned about the superdelegates thwarting the will of the electorate and ratifying the wrong candidate for President. I'm not worried. Read the Frank Rich article I linked to above. Obama is a freight train. The superdelegates aren't stupid, they can see, better than you and I, where the power is flowing. They want to be on the right side of history. And Obama is not naive, he's running a campaign on them now, just as he ran campaigns in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, etc.

Obama will sweep the remaining primaries, and by March 4 it will be apparent to everyone but perhaps Bill and Hillary that it's over. The superdelegates will adjust to get in line with reality.

An anonymous reader brings us a whitepaper from Codenomicon which discusses the state and future of wireless security. They examine Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and also take a preliminary look at WiMAX. The results are almost universally dismal; vulnerabilities were found in 90% of the tested devices[PDF]. The paper also looks at methods for vendors to preemptively block some types of threats. Quoting: "Despite boasts of hardened security measures, security researchers and black-hat hackers keep humiliating vendors. Security assessment of software by source code auditing is expensive and laborious. There are only a few methods for security analysis without access to the source code, and they are usually limited in scope. This may be one reason why many major software vendors have been stuck randomly fixing vulnerabilities that have been found and providing countless patches to their clients to keep the systems protected."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mmtux writes: "As technology becomes more advanced, I am increasingly worried about privacy in all aspects of my life. Unfortunately, whenever I attempt to discuss the matter with my friends, they show little understanding and write me off as a hyper-neurotic IT student. They say they simply don't care that the data they share on social networks may be accessible by others, that some laws passed by governments today might be privacy-infringing and dangerous, or that they shouldn't use on-line banking without a virus scanner and a firewall. Have you ever attempted to discuss data security and privacy concerns with a friend who isn't tech-savvy? How do you convince the average modern user that they should think about their privacy and the privacy of others when turning on their computer?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Socguy brings us a story from CBC News about a recently developed crystal that can soak up carbon dioxide gas "like a sponge." Chemists from UCLA believe that the crystals will become a cheap, stable method to absorb emissions at power plants. We discussed a prototype for another CO2 extraction device last year. Quoting: "'The technical challenge of selectively removing carbon dioxide has been overcome,' said UCLA chemistry professor Omar Yaghi in a statement. The porous structures can be heated to high temperatures without decomposing and can be boiled in water or solvents for a week and remain stable, making them suitable for use in hot, energy-producing environments like power plants. The highly porous crystals also had what the researchers called 'extraordinary capacity for storing CO2': one litre of the crystals could store about 83 litres of CO2."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WirePosted points us to a story discussing the future of news reporting. For over a year, CNN has been accepting user-generated news stories and posting the best of them for all to see. Earlier this week, CNN handed over the reins of iReport.com, allowing unfiltered and unedited content from anyone who cares to participate, provided it adheres to "established community guidelines". Analysts point to the amateur footage from the Virginia Tech shootings and the Minnesota bridge collapse as an example of the capabilities of distributed reporting. Will this form of user-driven reporting (with which we are well acquainted) come to challenge or supplant traditional new broadcasting?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DavidGarganta writes "A patent troll firm in suburban Philadelphia, Rembrandt IP Management, is trying to force large cable operators and major broadcasters to pay substantial license fees on the transmission of digital TV signals and Internet services. The firm is apparently trying to get 0.5% of all revenues from services that supposedly infringe on the patents. The targeted companies include ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Charter and Cablevision. According to MultiChannel News, Rembrandt's assault is especially aggressive, even for a patent troll: 'It is attacking two key technology standards used by the cable and broadcast industries, CableLabs' DOCSIS and the Advanced Television Systems Committee's digital-TV spec. "If they're successful, this could affect everything from the cost of cable service to the price of TVs," said the attorney close to the litigation, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reservoir Hill brings us a New York Times story about a man who will be allowed to keep the money he gained through hacking into a computer system in order to gain early access to a company's earnings statement. From the Times: "On Oct. 17, 2007, someone hacked into a computer system that had information on an earnings announcement to be made by IMS Health a few hours later. Minutes after the breach of computer security, Mr. Dorozhko invested $41,671 in put options that would expire worthless three days later unless IMS shares plunged before that. The next morning the share price did plunge, and Mr. Dorozhko made his money by selling the puts. 'Dorozhko's alleged "stealing and trading" or "hacking and trading" does not amount to a violation' of securities laws, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of United States District Court ruled last month. Although he may have broken laws by stealing the information, the judge concluded, 'Dorozhko did not breach any fiduciary or similar duty "in connection with" the purchase or sale of a security.' She ordered the S.E.C. to let him have his profits."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.